


Good Men and Ladies All

by Tammany



Series: Mary Morstan Stories [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Spies & Secret Agents, Starting Over, Witness Protection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 02:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1493782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of my pet theories of how they resolve Mary Morstan's story line is to have her forced to disappear back into hiding, only to come back long after as John's ill-defined second wife, once the coast is clear. It's just my quirkly solution to Mary, John, annoying melodrama caused by ACD canon, and equal melodrama caused by copyright battles in the Real World. </p><p>This plays with that notion: Mary and her daughter must flee London, with the help of Mycroft and his merry minions of mayhem. So Mary and child are leaving London incognito, accompanied by Greg Lestrade under another cover ID. </p><p>The story is melancholy, involves a bit of very non-graphic sex which is technically not adultery, and two people both dealing with the emotional ramifications of being a bit too good at being secret agents. "They're giving you a number and taking 'way your name" should be playing dolefully in the background. </p><p>For no good reason this story kept making me think of Hemmingway's "Hills Like White Elephants," as I wrote it. I think it's the moody, pensive atmosphere....It's surely not an affinity in plot or structure or skill...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Men and Ladies All

 

She left in winter—her baby tucked in the turn of her elbow, wrapped in a big pink blanket. Hours before she’d hugged her husband tight and said, “I love you,” and “Until we meet again,” and all the bright, optimistic things a woman says while she’s still trying to cling to hope.

Now she was past hope, and running on valor. In her purse was the first of what she knew would be a long line of false IDs. On her hand was a wedding ring that was not her own. Her hair was dark—a deep ashy brown like slightly clouded baking chocolate. Her eyes were blue. At her elbow was a man whose own paperwork suggested he was her husband. The child she carried was, according to similar forms and credentials, the only daughter of their late son and his wife.

“Want me to carry her for a while?” her most recent spouse of record asked.

“No,” she said. In her mind she’d intended to be polite and gracious. Instead the answer had come out bitter and resentful. “Sorry,” she said, fighting to bring her voice under control. “So sorry. Not your fault.”

“Understood, love,” he said. “Let me know when you need me to spell you.”

She nodded.  The train pulled up and the doors slid open, and she and her husband went in quietly, ignoring the push of the other passengers. He went a foot or two ahead, scanning the aisle, forging ahead like an ice breaker clearing her way.

She wondered if anyone else detected the little tells that announced he was armed, that he was on duty, that he was set to protect her and the child at any cost. He was a good-looking man. Not young anymore—older, even than the husband she’d walked away from hours before. He was taller. Today his hair was washed a pallid, insipid piss-ginger, the color of a red-head going grey with remarkably little grace or style. It was easy to look into wide-set brown eyes and imagine him younger, a fire-top with eyes like polished mahogany and a scamps smile.

No one would wonder at them together—her small and petite, him taller, with the sturdy, cobby build that made people think of craftsmen and trade and weekends on the footie field followed by nights in the pub after.

“Here’s our seats, love,” he said, as he found the reserved compartment. “In y’ go and get settled, then I’ll run up an’ get us some sarnies and tea, yeah?”

“Aye, Jackie, that’d be nice,” she replied. “Gimme a half-mo’ an’ I’ll get me and the wee ‘un all nice and settled.”

She curled up in the corner of the front-facing bench, and started unloading—first the travel seat for the baby, then the baby herself—all settled safe and secure. Then she rose long enough to stow her purse and the baby tote and her carry-on luggage. Then she dug in one capacious jacket pocket, found a book, and sat back down, pulling out reading glasses on a beaded chain necklace as she did.

“There,” she said, sitting down and opening her book. “You run along, now. We’ll be fine.” She watched as “Jackie” sloped off down the corridor. Even at his age he was a fine figure of a man, and as much a pleasure to watch walking away as walking toward you—his arse as charismatic as his smile.

The thought amused her for a moment, until she thought of her true husband, whose arse was probably more charismatic than his smile. Her own husband was both like and unlike the man she was running away with. Both were fighters, both strongly built and well-coupled with neat joints and clean, sturdy lines. Her own husband, though, was a sand-and silver blond, a bit dour, with neat, nimble hands. Shorter than the man who now stood as her protector.

By now he’d be grieving, she thought. By now the news of her presumed death would have been made public, and he’d be staggering with the shock. She wondered if he had enough protection—from enemies. From prying paparazzi.

She wondered if he’d stay in their old home, or move in with his best friend again. It would be better for her heart to think he’d stay in their home. She thought it would be better for him, though, to move back to Baker Street.

Beside her their daughter cranked, fretfully. She clucked and made broody noises. She stood and found the toted, hauled it back down, dug for the first bottle of formula. The milk was drugged. She’d fought against the necessity for days, before finally accepting the reasoning behind the decision. They needed to go unnoticed. Just a Gran and Granpa with the wee babb, poor thing, and no one to think twice about it if the little one let loose with a howl and cry.

They’d considered switching clothes, hair cut, passing the girl off as a boy. It seemed too risky. A baby has to be changed, on occasion, and trying to hide the child’s gender had seemed more awkward than just shifting her hair color, and praying no one really knew one baby from another.

Before sitting again, she checked. Her handgun was still properly seated, tucked into the holster under her coat. She curled herself into the corner of the bench and drew the baby onto her lap.

She felt a forlorn sense of loss when her child, her beloved child, latched on to the bottle without pause. She was relieved, too, of course—this escape would work better if her daughter gave no problem with the new arrangements. But it was almost certain that from this day on her daughter would never again nurse at her breast.

She’d already spent the past two days cutting back on nursing time. Her breasts, though, felt full and sore—much like her heart.

Jackie returned, tapped at the frame of the compartment door, then came in with a sunshine smile. His hands were filled with a cardboard carry box loaded to the scuppers. He sat down opposite her.

“How’re my lasses, then?” he asked, genially. He was a good man, she thought—and, to her infinite admiration, he seemed so common and ordinary. Earthy, solid, unremarkable. She was good—but not half so good at hiding her own light under a bushel as he was.

Her patron had once said, in near awe, “That man could pass as a lost tourist looking for the loo in the middle of the Pentagon’s war-room. I know. He did it back in ’04.”

She tucked the child’s fringe under the edge of her knit cap with a single finger. “We’re good, we are. She’s a sweet lass—good as gold. Not a peep out of her once I got her bottle. What did you bring us from the lunch car, eh?”

“Big cups of tea, fixed how you like it. Chicken salad sarnies on soft baps. Crisps. A tube of shortbread biscuits.”

“That’ll be good then,” she said. “Thanks, Jackie-love.”

“Always a pleasure, Daze.”

That was who they were, for now. Jackie and Daisy Attwater, from up in the north of England, heading for their current home in the suburbs of Manchester. Before they reached Manchester, though, they’d have other names and other destinations.

?“Manage to pick up a paper,” she asked. “Wanted to see what’s on the telly tonight.”

“No, Daze,” he said, casually, leaning back in the bench seat. “Daresay same thing as last week, eh?”

Nothing was the same as last week. In a matter of days she’d been forced to accept that her days as loving wife, loving mother, simple nurse in a simple life, were over. The game was on—and she and her child were the ball being chased down the field.

She and her new husband didn’t speak until the child was full and asleep. She tucked the baby back into the secure seat, frowning fretfully.

“She’ll be fine,” Jackie said. “That formula was checked by everyone, including…him. You know he’d not have let you leave with it if it were going to harm her.”

She nodded. Mycroft’s people had developed it, then Sherlock and his wicked little apprentice, Billy Wiggins had checked it, and finally John had reviewed it. It was safe, used for a few days, as planned. One last gift John could give his wife and daughter, before they fled into silence and all he could give them was the gift of his pretended mourning—a mourning not so pretended as it might be. The odds were too good that, even if his wife and daughter lived, they would never live with him again.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said. “Oi—you’ve got me an’ t’ boss lookin’ after you.”

She shot him an angry glance, wanting to fight loyally for the ability of her John and of Sherlock to protect her and the child. The trouble was, they couldn’t. If it weren’t for Mycroft, if it weren’t for “Jackie,” if it weren’t for all the MI5/6 team backing her, there was a good chance she’d already be dead…and have taken her husband, her daughter, and Sherlock with her.

He seemed immune to her glares in any case. She supposed anyone who’d put up with Sherlock in so many ways for so many years had to have inbuilt resistance by now.

He’d bought apples, too. He took two out of the cardboard tray, fished a pocket knife from his trouser pocket, and began neatly peeling the first. He was good: his square hands angled the knife and turned the fruit in a steady roll. Soon a long curled streamer of apple skin dropped into the tray. He halved the fruit, quartered it, chip-cut the core, then cut each quarter into thirds, before handing the entire heap to her across the open space between the benches.

She cupped her hands to take the fruit. “Thank you,” she said. Then, with more intensity, she met his eyes. “Thank you,” she said again, trying to convey thanks for everything—for several years almost invisible friendship; for his years of dedicated commitment to whatever one would call the Holmesian menagerie Mycroft and Sherlock had assembled around them. For his flawless performance as her husband as they fled London.

He gave her a sunny grin, reached across the car, and caught the nape of her neck, pulling her close enough to drop a kind kiss on her forehead. “Not a prob, old thing.”

God, she thought, how did he do that? Sound friendly and easy and common as fish and chips in a newspaper wrapper? How did he blend the way he did? Smart but not too smart; professional but never in the way that made you think of razor-sharp creased trousers or ramrod straight spines? What had John always called him? “Good old Greg.” John would say it with the same note of fondness he had talking about Major Sholto, or his old Army friends.

Now, he was good old Jackie—Jackie Attwater. She’d already heard him spend a half an hour telling a cabby about his restaurant in Manchester, “plain food, nothing fancy: breakfasts, of course, mixed grill. Nice bit of fish when I can get it. Homemade pork pies.” By the time they’d reached Paddinton Station she’d half-believed in The Hungry Hunter. His folks had pitched in, helped pay at the start, but he’d paid them back every penny long since. He’d hoped to leave it to his boy but…. Well. There was still Maggie, their daughter, and maybe the wee lass would have an interest.

Tomorrow no doubt he’d be Frank Hodges. Or George Mayhew—or some other ordinary, likeable, unremarkable fellow with a charming smile and an easy way with him.

In Birmingham they gathered their things and silently slipped off the train, leaving the remainder of their ticket unused. Jackie flagged a cab, and they went to a small, ordinary motel. Single room. Single bed. Nothing to shake the illusion of Jackie and Daisy, who’d disappear in a day.

It was too early to eat. Too late to do much of anything. The baby was stirring. She was a bit slow and dopey, but amiable and happy enough.

“I’ll take her for a bit,” Jackie said. “You take a long shower, relax a bit. When you come out I’ll make you a rum and coke.”

“Not too expensive?”

He snorted. “I think we can count on a bit of financial support from The British Government. A couple rum and colas won’t break the bank.”

The shower wasn’t much over lukewarm, and the water pressure was weak. Still, it was good to scrub her hair, wash away the feeling left over from the previous night, of too many tears held back. She and John had made love one more time.

Her hair still smelled of dye. She looked less like a faded ghost, though. She’d been a brunette as a young woman, though a different shade than now: honey and amber and acorn brown. That was decades ago, though—a woman John had never known. The woman John loved was silver blonde with the hair of a 1920s fashionista, lacking only a cloche hat and a Chanel suit to complete the illusion.  Now her hair was cropped in a “sensible” shortie-cut of no style at all, the sort of thing a housewife could “keep up” herself with the occasional trim of her fringe, clipping along her browline with a pair of sewing shears and peering into the foggy bathroom mirror between bi-annual trips to the salon. She was nobody from nowhere. Anyone from anywhere.

He was playing with the baby when she went back out. He’d settled in the tiny armchair by the little coffee table nestled next to the window of the room. The baby was laughing softly as he made faces and flubbered his lips like a horse snorting. He smiled at her, all wrapped in a cheap blue kimono with cherry blossoms printed in swathes across the fabric.

“Want me to order Chinese?” he asked.

“I’ll do that. I can make the rum and cola, too. Want one?”

“God, yes.”

He’d slipped out of his limp department store anorak. He sat wedged into the too-small chair, the leather and nylon straps of his holster rig standing out sharply, black on the pale blue of his oxford shirt. She made the rum and colas, then gave him his and took back the baby. He took the first sip and let his eyes flutter closed, sighing.

“Now that’s good.”

“Bet you’d prefer a pint,” she said, smiling.

He gave her a still, enigmatic glance, then said, “Lestrade would. Lestrade’s a pint sort of a fellow. Jackie may like rum and colas better, and pina coladas better still, with silly cocktail umbrellas and too much fruit. Jackie throws parties in his back garden and puts up tikki torches.” He swallowed another mouthful, then said, in a voice even more still, “Mycroft said to tell you what he’s told John. You are now both legally unmarried. It seemed kinder this way. Come the day, well—you can always do it over. You throw a good wedding. But right now you’re starting over. Better to start over clean. Mary Watson and her daughter are dead in a terrorist car bombing. John Watson’s a widower.”

She buried her face in her daughter’s tummy, and tried to pretend she was just cuddling playfully. She knew perfectly well he was simply ignoring the obvious. She was grateful.

“Have you been in contact since we left London?”

He nodded. “So far no one is on our trail.”

“Good.”

“I’ll be with you another day and night. At the end of that time you’ll go into a safe-house until we’ve got a new identity for you. You’ll have minor surgery, but we’re keeping it simple. Colored contacts, hair change, a slight shift in your cheekbones. New background. You’ll be in Canada. You can go back to sounding like an American.”

She nodded, then said, “How about I call for the Chinese? What do you want?”

“Kung Pao?”

“All right. I’ll get mu gu gai pan. Egg rolls?”

“Yeah. Steamed dumplings, too.”

They ate, watched “Four Weddings and a Funeral” on the hotel’s pay-per-view. She fed her daughter again, then gave the child a bath and tucked her in while Jackie scrubbed up. When he came out she was already tucked into bed.

“Want me to sleep on the floor?” he asked.

She shrugged. “No need. Just…all I intend to do is sleep. I’m not really very Bond-girl.”

He slipped between the sheets and lay with his back to her. She turned off the light.

He snored, but not badly.

In the middle of the night she woke to find herself crushed up against him, his arms around her. Her face was wet and her mind echoed with the almost-remembered sound of her own weeping.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“No need.”

“I love him.”

“I know. If you didn’t, you’d be back there, getting him killed,” he said.

She nodded, and snuffled forlornly.

“You’re a good man,” she said.

He shrugged. “No. Just a good agent. They’re not the same thing.”

“He thinks well of you,” she said. “They all do.”

“Good old Greg,” he agreed, his voice dry and empty. “Yeah. I’ve heard them. Good old Greg. Or if it’s Sherlock, it’s ‘Good old Gavin.’ Or Geoff. Or Germaine. Greg’s a good fellow. A nice bloke.”

“And you’re not Greg.”

“No.”

She understood. She wondered who else did.

“Mycroft—he knows?”

“Knows…what?”

“The real you?”

He was silent for a very long time—so long she thought perhaps he’d fallen asleep again. Then he said, “What real me?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Who’s the real Mary? Do you know anymore?”

She sighed and shook her head…then stopped, surprised. “Yes. I do. I’m the woman who’d die for John Watson. I’m my daughter’s mother. Nothing—nothing at all—will change that. No matter how many new names I wear or places I live or backgrounds I pretend to have, from now on they’re just there to keep alive the woman who loves John and our daughter.”

He held her, silent. Just as she was dropping off, he whispered, “You’re lucky. Hold on to that.”

Then she fell asleep.

In the morning they gathered up their things, swapped IDs again, grabbed breakfast at a workingman’s cafeteria, then took a train east. She watched him, rather than think of John, and wonder how he was.

It was different when you realized that Good Old Greg was a role—perhaps authentic, perhaps based on his own core self, but, still, a role he played.

“How good are you?” she asked.

He met her eye. “Good.”

“Thought so.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“I’d be dead long since if I weren’t.”

“Likewise.”

He was a lovely man, she thought. “John said you were married, once.”

“Didn’t last.”

“Do you miss her?”

He shrugged and watched the embankment flash past, covered in goldenrod and New England asters gone wild—tiny white stars in the weeds. “She was an anchor,” he said…not like a man who doesn’t want to be tied down, but like a sailor who yearns for safe harbor.

That night they spent in another small hotel, with another single bed. When they woke again, in the middle of the night, her face wet against his chest, she whispered, “I’m not married.” Neither, of course, was he—and both were mourning that.

They screwed in the dark: sad, miserable, lonely sex redeemed by tenderness and solace on both sides.

“It’s better this way,” he told her. “I know it’s hard, but you have no way of knowing if you’ll ever be able to come back. Neither of you can afford to pretend it’s not done, for now.”

“I know. But I want to come back.”

“I know.”

“They love you,” she said, then. “All of them, I think. Sherlock and John and even that odd duck Mycroft. Maybe if you let them in a bit more. You can: they’re part of the secret world, just like me. Even John a bit, now: we’ve corrupted him, the lot of us. When you go back and take care of them, just let them take care of you, too.”

“Take care of who?” he asked. “It’s all smoke and shadows.”

“No,” she said. “You’re the man who’s imagined the possibility of Sherlock Holmes being good.”

“Your John’s the one who got to see it happen, though.”

“Don’t,” she said. “You can’t erase yourself like that.”

Then both were silent, because when it came down to it, erasing themselves was what they did—who they were. Certainly what they were doing.

The next day on the platform, “Good old George from Kent” hugged his sister Annie and his niece goodbye. “You’ve got everything you need, now,” he said, firmly, “and you know who to contact if you need help.”

“Yes, blud,” she said, smiling. “And you—you’re to take care of yourself, you daft fool.”

He nodded, and she waved as he got on the train. He waved back, his grin as charming and earthy and wonderful as ever. Good old George. When the train was out of sight she gathered her bags and she and the baby took a taxi to the safe house.

That night she wrote a letter, to be delivered to the MI6 drop box she’d been given to contact Mycroft Holmes.

“He got us here safe. He’s a superb agent. Do something, before he’s spent himself empty for England. You can only be ‘Good Old Greg’ for so long.”


End file.
